Who have leftist figures like Stalin/Mao/etc. considered sussy bakas?

One of the dumbest aspects of learning about the Russian and Chinese revolutions is just seeing how many of the original revolutionaries got shot for being counterrevolutionaries.

The idea that guys like Peng Dehuai, Zinioev and Kamenev were secretly fascists all along, but they only revealed it after they'd risked everything for the revolution just seems insane.

I don't know about Zhu De, but for the Bolsheviks the idea generally wasn't that they were crypto-fascists, but that they firmly and sometimes by means of conspiracy maintained a reactionary ideology that they tried to wreck the socialist project with, e.g. that class antagonism could be reconciled and class society thereby preserved indefinitely. Other times, it was not that they had such an ideology but that they insisted on enabling people who do. I don't endorse every accusation made but, even in one of the most extensive cases, Trotsky, the accusation wasn't that he was a fascist but that he collaborated with fascists for the sake of subversion (which I don't believe is true in the case of supposedly working with the Axis, though he sure did work with Russian rightists and try to work with the HUAC), whether because he didn't believe in anything or because he thought he was such a clever boy that he could get a net benefit out of working with fascists.
As for why, well, it makes perfect sense to me why someone who is just somewhat progressive for the time (or even just personally aggrieved) would support the Bolsheviks when the February Revolution failed to produce an end to Russian involvement in WWI. People have all sorts of reasons for supporting the communist revolution without being on the same page as characters like Lenin, as Lenin himself wrote repeatedly about in texts like "Left Wing" Communism and elsewhere, and that should in fact be expected to be a huge proportion of the support.
Trotsky generally is honestly a great proof of how what you're saying, though you are right it "just seems insane," is perfectly likely, because beneath the accusations that we agree are probably false was a history of decades of careerism, repugnant ideological contortions, and wrecker behavior. Depending on your view, Solzhenitsyn might be an even greater example, because he was a military officer in the Red Army but had the most abominable political values short of the people who he was fighting in the war.
- Trotsky is a horrible example. The policies for which he was condemned were for being on the left side of the party and advocating positions that would later be adopted by Stalin. His biggest falling out with the rest of the party was the trade union debate, and Stalin copied his homework on that one 100%.
  The issue with Trotsky was personal, and that he would always exist as a possible rallying figure for opposition, not that he was insufficiently revolutionary or did not follow the party program. And trying to turn him into a fascist figure or a fascist supporting figure is honestly cope trying to pretend Stalinist wasn't a pragmatist but did things purely out of ideological purity, which is absurd.
  Edit: Stalin killed trotsky because he perceived trotsky as a threat to the soviet union, a view that was in part informed by personal distaste but also massively informed by the fact that he was seen as valid counter figure for any communist opposition to Stalin, not because one of the guys who helped arranged his transport was a White or because he held a talk in front of social democrats or that he told the American government that even if he didn't like stalin the soviet union was still better than capitalism, because if that was his motivation Stalin would have been a fucking idiot.
- A lot of communist movements in the imperial periphery or semi-periphery are fueled more by nationalism than communism, and it's just that the communist party has the best program for achieving a lot of what the nationalists want.
Sankara entered the chat

the girl reading this

lol, I feel like a pretty decent percentage of State and Revolution was Lenin throwing shade on his contemporaries.

Fucking
Kautsky!
- "How much more betrayal can I take? It's like I've been stabbed in the heart."

like every theory writer was basically posting a twitter thread shittalking their contemporaries. Lenin would've been an amazing poster

As someone broadly supportive of Stalin, I think that among Stalin's contemporaries who he could name, he might consider the majority that way. Tito is an example that people here don't bring up very often, but he was regarded as a sicko revisionist. I've got some friends who have a special interest in the subject, but I personally know basically nothing about it.

Stalin: Trotsky

and a whole bunch of the old bolsheviks
- I don't actually think Stalin disliked them as much on a personal level as he did Trotsky. His sidelining of Kamanev and Zinoviev was a power play and a consolidation of power but until the Ryutin affair it doesn't seem like he wanted to do much more than marginalize them as political rivals

Trotsky

/thread lmao

Uhm each other right?

Communists do not fight for personal military power (they must in no circumstances do that, and let no one ever again follow the example of Chang Kuo-tao)